Digital accessibility is a broad subset of an already broad area. in 2018 and found that "One in 4 U.S. adults 鈥� 61 million Americans 鈥� have a disability that impacts major life activities." These disabilities can be permanent, temporary, or circumstantial, and fall into six main types: mobility, cognition, hearing, vision, independent living, and self-care.
It is our responsibility in higher education, both from an ethical and a legal standpoint (Overview of accessibility legal considerations), to ensure that anyone regardless of ability is able to receive the same quality educational experience. A significant portion of this is ensuring that the course content and materials used are accessible. This might include adding captions and audio descriptions to videos, tagging scanned PDF readings to convey their structure to assistive technology, or resolving issues found in Canvas through UDOIT.
To facilitate this essential work, there a number of pages linked below discussing how to assess your course content for accessibility. We've also collected some external resources that may be of use.
Accessibility and Assistive Technology
Creating Accessible Content
- Accessible Syllabus Templates
- How to Write Good Alt Text
- Accessible Documents and Websites
- Accessible Videos
Accessibility Research
Accessibility
- by Patrick Lowenthal et al, in The Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 2020. This article outlines the foundations of accessibility and UDL.
- in TechTrends by Baldwin and Ching, 2021.
- in Open 杨贵妃传媒: The Journal of Open, Distance, and e-杨贵妃传媒, 2020.
- in the American Journal of Distance Education, 2022.
Students with Disabilities
- in European Journal of Special Needs Education, 2022.
- in International Journal of Educational Research, 2022.
- in Journal of Special Education Technology, 2022.